


[pretentious title here]

by whittler_of_words



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Flowey (Undertale) Being an Asshole, Flowey (Undertale) Redemption, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Reader is Frisk (Undertale), References to Undertale Genocide Route, Secret Identity Fail, Selectively Mute Frisk (Undertale), Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18575914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whittler_of_words/pseuds/whittler_of_words
Summary: Alphys, Papyrus, Undyne, Toriel- there’s so much about you they’ve gotten all wrong. You can forget about it, most of the time, when the only day is today and you’re happy and things are good, but when they aren’t, when all you can think about is all the secrets you can never tell and all the parts of you that have to be kept secret…This is one thing you can set straight. One piece of a scattered puzzle you can flip over and put it where it fits.“I’m not telling everyone I broke the barrier,” Flowey says.





	1. Chapter 1

“Okay. Hold on.” The expression on Flowey’s face is one of a person who’s wishing very much that he had hands with which to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You want me...to do _what?_ ” 

Dead leaves crackle apart as you shift your feet, nearly toppling the huge pile you’ve slowly built over your legs. Some tiny pieces have already found their way inside your socks, scraping against your skin in a way that’s just this side of unpleasant, but you ignore it in favor of crinkling some more. “Don’t make me repeat myself,” you say, jerking your thumb under your chin and accidentally scratching yourself from the force of the sign. Ouch. 

“Fine. You don’t have to,” he says, “because it’s not happening.”

You take the liberty of giving your hands the appreciation they deserve by pinching your own nose. “Come on,” you tell him. “It’s not like it even changes anything. Just go up with me for an hour, tell them I’m not lying, and you can come back down here and go back to doing whatever it is you do. Easy.” 

“I’m _not_ telling everyone I broke the barrier!”

You peer at him sidelong. Cross your arms for a moment, for effect. “Scared?”

“What?” He scoffs. “No. I just think you’re being stupid.”

“No, you,” you retort, and then bare your teeth in a grimace. “Please. I’m not asking you to offer yourself to the public as the savior of monsterkind. I already know that’s my job.” The old tree has started growing leaves again, miraculously. You wonder how long it’ll be until they fall off this time. “But I hate that my family thinks I did something that I didn’t.” 

It’s the truth, even if only the beginning of it. Alphys, Papyrus, Undyne, Toriel- there’s so much about you they’ve gotten all wrong. You can forget about it, most of the time, when the only day is today and you’re happy and things are good, but when they aren’t, when all you can think about is all the secrets you can never tell and all the parts of you that have to be kept secret...

This is one thing you can set straight. One piece of a scattered puzzle you can flip over and put it where it fits. 

“I promise,” you tell him again. “I won’t let it change anything.”

Somehow, that only makes him look a little more uneasy. The expression sparks a distant feeling of recognition in you, and for the first time in this entire conversation, Chara speaks up.

_Unless..._

You tilt your head a little, eyebrows raising just slightly, less with the question of your signs and more from the incredulousness you feel. “Do you... _want_ it to change anything?”

That seems to snap him out of it. He jolts, expression instantly shifting to one of indignation. “Of course not,” he nearly splutters. “I just- I didn’t think it meant that much to you.”

“I guess,” you say, reluctant to admit how much it really does mean to you even as you figure he’s probably only pointing it out to deflect from his own discomfort, but you shouldn’t be surprised that Flowey saw through your bluster so easily regardless. It’s the fact that no one else can really understand so much of what you’ve done -- so much of why you did what you did -- that keeps you coming back down here to talk to him. Even if he keeps telling you how much he wishes you’d stop, you know he understands that, too. You’re both overly familiar with continuing down paths you know you shouldn’t.

He sighs. Heavily. “Fine. But you’ll owe me one, Frisk.” He glares at you, sharply. “This better only backfire on _you,_ y’know. Bad enough you have to drag me into your little identity crisis, but if you drag me into the consequences of this too, I will destroy everything you know.”

“Love you too,” you say, and promptly stick out your tongue.

_ _

Even with all the practice you’d gotten from the Underground, it takes the better part of a week to wrangle everyone into Asgore’s backyard. You’d thought Toriel’s, at first, but Chara had reminded you that while she has neighbors, Asgore doesn’t. Not that you _want_ for there to be any audible blowout from all this, but you know your chances just about as much as you know Flowey, and you figure it’s better safe than sorry.

Of course, having everyone gather at Asgore’s house means the Boss Monster going out of his way to provide refreshments, which you’d be hard pressed to ever turn down; he still might not be able to recreate the old pie recipe, but he’s more than capable of baking a mean cookie. 

“If he tries anything...well, he better not!” It’s probably the sixth time Undyne has said something like that since she arrived, and she sounds just as genuine as the first. “I know you’re vouching for him, punk, but after all the people he hurt...” She drains her tea, glaring at the memory of her only real encounter with Flowey. You suppress the urge to grimace. Honestly, you doubt there’s anyone here who’s had a good first impression of him. Or second.

 _I did some messed up stuff as a flower,_ comes Asriel’s voice ringing distantly in your ears, and the grimace suddenly becomes impossible to suppress.

“If Frisk says he’s changed, then he has,” Papyrus says. “Besides! Flowey’s not a bad person at all! He just needs some friends! And some morals.” He pauses. “...But that’s what friends are for!”

 _Papyrus is an outlier and should not be counted,_ Chara says, _before you start getting any ideas._

 _What ideas?_ you retort, shooting Papyrus a grateful look that he eagerly returns with a smile.

 _That everyone’s gonna accept this so easily._ The sun beats down on Asgore’s garden, and your eyes roam over it in search of telltale yellow petals. You wouldn’t put it past Flowey to hide for a bit before revealing himself. _Even if it is the truth, it’s still only part of it._

Chara has a point, but admitting that would be the same as admitting there’s a chance this won’t work. Which you know, objectively, is entirely possible- but you have to believe this will get you somewhere in the same way you had to believe you’d get out of the Underground in the first place, which seemed to work out well enough, so.

Not counting all the murder and death at least.

“A shame your brother couldn’t make it,” Asgore says, announcing his arrival from inside the house with a pitcher of tea that he uses to refill Undyne’s cup. Some gets poured into Papyrus’ also (you still have no idea where the skeleton puts it away), sounding only a little awkward as he engages in the usual small talk. “He said he had work?”

Papyrus graciously ignores Undyne’s scoff while you do the same for Chara’s. “The hot dog stand has been such a huge hit, he keeps having to open new locations! It’s been a real pain having to find a new place for him to set up every day, but he seems to be relishing the change of scenery.”

_More like he just didn’t want to be around Flowey if--_

“I’m glad he’s mustard up some passion to do something he enjoys,” you tell Papyrus, interrupting Chara in their little tirade. The mental glower is worth the way he preens at your recognition of his pun, even if you can tell most of Chara’s sudden annoyance comes from them having noticed it too late to get their own in.

“I’ll be more than happy to fill him in on the details later,” Toriel says, finally emerging from the house herself. The reason she’s only just arriving sits primly in the tin in her hands; some last minute shopping had left her unable to start the pie until it was almost too late, but if she has it now, at least it means the backup one she’d bought will be all yours later. But as much as you love hoarding snacks...

 _You think she just brought it to rub in Asgore’s face?_ you ask.

 _Probably,_ Chara replies, terse with a discomfort you know they feel.

Maybe, eventually, the two of them will be on speaking terms again. As it is, it’s only been a few months since you left the Underground -- a few months since everyone’s had a chance to even start moving on -- and you get the feeling it’s gonna take a lot longer than that for Toriel and Asgore to be in the same room without making some passive aggressive jab, let alone sit down and talk things out. There’s been many a time where Chara has had to translate the moving parts of someone’s face for you as if it was another language, but If even you, aware of how spectacularly bad you are at reading people’s emotions, can see the spiteful spark of triumph in Toriel’s eyes as the smell of butterscotch-cinnamon fills the air, well... She’s probably not trying that hard to hide it.

 _I can feel you plotting,_ Chara says, watching through your eyes as Toriel sets the pie down on the table and starts divvying up the slices. _Whatever it is you’re going to do..._

 _Who says I’m gonna do anything,_ you return, trying not to sulk. _I wish I_ could _do something to help, but I get the feeling I’d just make things worse._

 _Like that’d be anything new,_ they shoot back, and it’s an effort to not stick out your tongue at the empty air. _But I commend you on your maturity._

 _As if you don’t want to see them back together._

There’s still one more empty seat out in the grass. You’re not exactly one to care too much about punctuality, but the thought of this person in particular not being able to make it sends an unexpected surge of anxiety to your stomach. Probably because, out of everyone, she’ll have the best chance at piecing together the true meaning behind Flowey’s actions when he collected all those souls, and you’re still not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

You expected Chara to just let your comment go, so their next words surprise you. _I don’t know if I do,_ they say, almost hesitantly. _It’s.._

 _Complicated,_ you finish for them, and neither of you need words to understand the feeling of shared agreement.

“Will Alphys not be joining us after all?” Asgore, to his credit, doesn’t seem to shaken up as he directs his question to Undyne. “I thought I remembered her saying she would be here.”

“Agh- she got caught up at a lecture,” Undyne says, picking up the phone she’s had set out on her lap, “but she said she’ll be here soon. Those students can’t get enough of her. Almost makes me jealous!” 

Some of that anxiety unspools as she chortles. So Alphys is coming, then.

“Wowie! Alphys has been getting popular,” Papyrus notes. “Of course, there’s no way she wouldn’t be with all the self confidence training I’ve been giving her. She’s finally starting to let her talent shine!”

Asgore smiles. “How wonderful. I’m glad to hear she’s doing well.”

“Yeah, she’s AMAZING!” Undyne slaps a hand down on the table, causing it to nearly buckle from the blow. Toriel catches the tin still half full with pie from where it’d jumped in the air and sets it back down without blinking.

“It’ll be nice to catch up in the meanwhile,” Toriel says. “Have you scheduled your driving test yet, Papyrus? Sans has been telling me how hard you’ve been practicing.” 

“Well, of course I’ve been practicing! There’s no such thing as being too prepared, so I’m waiting a little longer.”

“Pfft, as if there’s any chance you could fail, you big dork,” Undyne says, punching his arm. “If you do, I’ll eat my favorite hat!” 

“But you don’t wear hats,” he points out.

“Oh,” she says. “You’re right. Okay, I’ll eat my favorite eyepatch.”

Papyrus gasps. “The one that’s really just a pair of sunglasses with one of the lenses popped out?!”

“What? No, you big loser, the one that’s shaped like a fish.”

“I like the fish one,” Asgore says.

“See! Thank you!! It’s-”

“Flowey.”

You’d been watching the grass, gaze wandering, and you knew what it meant as soon as you saw the flash of yellow in the corner of your eyes. He knows full well he can’t hide when your voice would catch everyone’s attention, so it’s only a few moments before he emerges in the lawn not far from you.

“You’re late you know,” you tell him, back to using sign again. “I almost thought you weren’t coming.” That’s a lie, of course; you knew he would come. But the comment is just teasing enough to get his attention on you, instead of the way everyone is suddenly staring at him. 

He smirks, somehow managing to make the smile sarcastic. “Yeah, well, I almost didn’t.” When his gaze does go back to the others, you watch his expression, and wonder if the flat disinterest there is really all he’s feeling. But- maybe you’ve been spending too much time down there with him; you can’t tell why, but something about him seems...

 _Nervous,_ Chara tries. _Afraid?_

Yeah. Either of those work.

“Is this everyone?” Flowey asks, turning back towards you and raising an eyebrow as if in judgement. Who knows, maybe it is; whether for you having invited the people you have, or for not inviting the people he thinks you should’ve, you can’t tell. He can think what he wants. You just didn’t want to make too big a spectacle of it, is all.

“Almost,” you say.

“Alphys is on her way!” Papyrus supplies, smiling as if unaffected by the suddenly tense atmosphere. “She just got held up a little.”

Flowey snorts. “Oh, of course _she’d_ be late.”

“Hey,” Undyne says, eye narrowed. “You got something against Alphys?” 

Flowey just smiles real wide. Uh oh. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Alright okay that’s it. You step between them, waving your arms as you step into their lines of sight. “Stop it!” you tell them both, and then turning so that only Flowey can see your signs: “You’re being an asshole.”

He sneers up at you. Now that you’re a little closer, you can definitely tell something’s up from the lines under his eyes that he’s either not aware of, or just not bothering to hide. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

You huff, impatient and trying not to be. “It’s barely been two minutes,” you say, keeping your signs as tight and small as you can when you’re trying to make a point. “Look. I know you don’t really like Alphys, and I don’t blame you. But if you want to do this without everyone finding out who you really are, you probably should at least pretend to be nice to the one other person who could spill everything, okay?”

He grumbles. Sighs. Is still doing so when you step out of the way, and you go back to assessing the situation.

“Okay, fine,” he says. He turns a grimace onto Undyne. “I’m sorry.”

She smiles at him, a fish monster’s mouth full of teeth. “Yeah, well, it’s not me you should be apologizing to.”

“I’ll have to wait until she _gets_ here then, won’t I?” he says, smiling back in kind.

Your attention is caught by Toriel rubbing her forehead tiredly. “I know you wanted us all to be here for this, Frisk, but... it might just be better to start now.”

“I have to admit, I’ve been curious about what you’ve been wanting to tell us,” Asgore says.

Flowey whips around to look at you fast it enough that it actually startles you a little bit. “You mean you haven’t _told them yet??_ ” he hisses.

You frown defensively. “What was I supposed to say? I couldn’t start without you. What if they don’t believe me?”

Asgore’s brow furrows. “Believe what, Frisk?”

Flowey looks at Asgore. Looks at you, then the others, and sighs. “That I broke the Barrier,” he says. “That’s what they want me to tell you.”

Undyne snorts immediately, as if on reflex. “Yeah, right! Seriously, Frisk, what did you want to tell us that needed this guy here?”

Your can feel your face screw up. “He’s not lying. That’s really what I wanted to tell you.”

“Wait, seriously?” Undyne blinks. Sits up a little straighter. “But I thought that was you!”

“Exactly,” Flowey says, not sounding too pleased about it. “That’s why they want to tell you so bad.”

“I don’t understand,” Toriel admits. 

“Well, you remember he absorbed the souls.” You watch as everyone nods with various levels of discomfort. “We fought for a bit, but he changed his mind and broke the Barrier before letting everyone go.”

“I... I’m sorry,” Undyne says, looking almost pained as she does so. “Not that I think you’re lying, Frisk, but Flowey seemed way too eager to kill everyone to just- decide to free everyone instead. What could have possibly even changed his mind like that!”

“The power of Friendship?” Papyrus offers.

Flowey opens his mouth. Closes it. “I mean. Yeah.”

“It’s...personal,” you say, ignoring a few eyebrows as they raise. “But he changed his mind, and that’s all that matters.”

“You know, you’re right,” is the first red flag you get. Your suspicious look is met with Flowey’s thoughtful one. “Which is why Frisk IS the one who broke the Barrier.”

You look at him. “What.”

“Undyne is right, Frisk,” he says. “You know what I was like. I _never_ would have let everyone go without you there to talk me down. You showed me I was wrong.” The expression on his face his somber. There’s no hint of it being insincere, but then he has to ruin it when his mouth ticks up into a smile. “Maybe I did the stupid deed or whatever, but the Barrier is only broken because of you, y’know.”

Your eyes narrow. “No, that’s dumb,” you say. “I’m a human, there’s no way I ever could’ve broken it on my own.” And you both already _know_ that, is the thing; how many other times have you gone through the Underground? How many times had you tried to leave? Succeeded? There’s only one route where the Barrier actually breaks, and it’s the one where Flowey breaks it himself.

But you can’t say that right now, obviously. You settle on giving him a Look that you’re pretty sure he ignores.

 _You know, without me to bring up the right memories, he never would’ve moved on, right?_ Chara muses. _Does that mean I broke the barrier, too? Ohh- oh, let me in the ballot,_ they say, apparently deciding that now is a good time to be as unhelpful as possible.

“Then...” There’s more than a hint of confusion in Asgore’s voice. “You both broke it?”

“No!” you say, and turn to meet Flowey’s glare when he says it at the same time.

“If you convinced him to do it, but he was the one to actually break it, then it seems you both do deserve credit,” Toriel points out.

“No,” you sign again, as emphatically as you know how. “There was a lot of stuff going on that made it possible, but the Barrier itself never would’ve broken without Flowey. You can’t deny that.” You don’t miss the way everyone hesitates at your insistence. ‘Why does this matter to them so much,’ they’re probably thinking. 

But Flowey just scoffs, apparently unaffected by your intensity. 

“Okay, but by your logic, that’s still just proving me right. Maybe the Barrier never would’ve broken without my help, but I never would’ve bothered breaking it if _you_ hadn’t convinced me in the first place.”

Now you’re just arguing in circles. You tsk, frustrated and trying (failing) not to show it. “That doesn’t mean I’m the one who broke it!!!” Jabbing a finger at him is a lot harder when he’s so close to the ground. You do your best anyway, stalking closer to him. “You’re the one who actually set everyone free, not me!”

He’s rolling his eyes before you’re even done signing. “Oh, so that’s how we’re framing it now, huh? I didn’t set everyone free, numbnuts, I opened a door that everyone would have been too scared to walk through if you hadn’t given them hope.” Flowey’s words are kind, but there’s no real warmth in them, and not because of the snarl he wears like his weird face was made for it; the words sound recited, clinical- a statement of facts. You nearly bite a hole in your tongue with the effort of not snarling back.

You can’t help it. Chara does the mental equivalent of making an X sign with their arms -- red means stop, do not pass go, turn back immediately -- but you ask anyway, eyes glued to his and daring him to act like what he just said even means anything. “What are you even talking about?”

“Come _on,_ Frisk,” he groans, almost as if to say: I really can’t believe you’re just gonna let me obliterate you right now. “Let’s say you never fell and I still magically decided to break the Barrier. That I somehow managed to absorb the human souls, the monster souls, break the Barrier, and then return them right away. Then what?” He pauses, but hardly waits for a real answer. “Then NOTHING! Nothing good, at least! You think Asgore would’ve just made his merry peaceful way down the mountain after being at war with humans for so long? That Toriel would’ve ever even realized it broke from inside her little mausoleum?” He rolls his eyes, again. “Please. And don’t even get me started on the Royal Weeaboos.”

The _Hey!_ of protest from behind you is distant, easily ignored.

Deciding it’s your turn to scoff, you don’t waste any time following through. “As if you or someone else couldn’t have figured out some way to make it work.”

A new expression of irritation crosses his face. Something a little more restrained, which only catches your attention because it seems like a silly thing to try to tamp down on when you’re both already barrelling ahead at full speed.

“For the worse, maybe! I don’t need to tell _you_ how many ways something like that could go wrong.”

Oh, low blow. You reel back for a moment. “It- that still doesn’t change the fact that _you_ broke the Barrier!”

“NO I DIDN’T!!!”

He pretty much spits it out. There’s something like real, actual rage in his voice, which- most of your arguments with Flowey have been what a lot of people probably consider “mean”. Full of too-personal jabs and jokes, maybe, but in reality composed of nothing else but empty bluster. Sure, maybe you resent him for a lot of the things he’s done to you, and you know he has to have his reasons for resenting you too, but-

You realize this whole thing has gotten you both actually pretty angry.

“You keep talking about wanting to set things straight?” he says, when it’s obvious you don’t have an immediate response. “About credit where it’s due or whatever? Then stop trying to just push that same problem onto me.”

That’s it. You’ve officially lost track of whatever the fuck it is he’s talking about. Bringing your hands over your face, you resist the urge to scream into them. You let them fall back down to keep talking instead. “I’m not trying to push ANYTHING onto you! How is this wrong?? You did it! You broke th--”

“But I DIDN’T,” he interrupts, cutting you off. “Oh my god! You keep bringing that up like it’s true, but it’s fucking not! I’m not the one who broke it! Neither of us did!”

You snort dismissively even as your heart flutters against your ribs. “Okay, sure, and who was--”

“It was ASRIEL, you fucking IDIOT,” he says, and you don’t recognize the feeling in your chest for what it is until your feet have already taken a step forward.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Chara says with your mouth.

It’s like a bubble bursting. You’d been so caught up in the banter that you’d almost completely forgotten about everyone else not a few feet away, but as you watch Flowey’s angry expression rapidly dissolve into one of realization, then understanding, then fear-

You somehow managed not to hear the sound of the cup breaking as it was dropped to the floor, but the evidence is littered all over the grass in your peripheral. You can’t actually move your eyes to see more. Even still, the small voice to the side and behind you isn’t something you need to see to understand.

“Asriel?”

Chara just watches as Asgore’s simple question finally sparks Flowey into action. Or maybe it’s that he moves too quickly for them to react; one second he’s there, and the next he’s not, disappeared into the ground and away to who knows where. 

Leaving you here.

The moment you realize that is the moment you find you can look around again. You can feel Chara’s laugh creeping up your throat, and you suppress it to a pair of shaking shoulders through sheer willpower. They laugh inside your head anyway. _Haha. That was a whole, what, nine? Ten minutes, before everything collapsed into disaster? I think that’s a new record._

You cross your arms into something like a hug, hoping to comfort them even as you can only blink in response to the shocked faces of your friends when you finally turn back to them. It’s weird, because you know you and Flowey both kind of fucked up, but no matter how you look at it the implications just don’t seem to compute. Of course, it’s been a while since you truly had to deal with the consequences of your actions. You’d forgotten what it’s like.

You open your mouth. Close it. Bring up your hands and put them back down. Consider the pros and cons of just collapsing into the grass and refusing to get up again. 

A distant bang echoes through the house before you can even decide how to mess up next. The back door to Asgore’s house slides open a moment later, revealing a flushed and sweaty Alphys grinning brightly from ear to ear, looking absolutely adorable in a floral patterned dress. “Sorry I’m late, guys! I hope I didn’t miss anything!”

Despite yourself, the laugh that escapes you then is yours and Chara’s both.

_ _

 

Toriel is pacing.

She traces and retraces her steps through a tight rectangle just offcenter in Asgore’s living room, completely ignoring the empty space around her as if used to treading the ground of a room much smaller than this one. Chara gently shows you how her steps line up so neatly with the span of the Ruins’ door, presenting the mental projection to you the same way someone might studiously scratch numbers and equations into the margins of their notes, showing their work. You just as gently push the image away.

Papyrus and Undyne have both gone home, and you’re about as relieved as you are disappointed at the absence of your friends. Undyne had almost insisted on staying just for Alphys’ sake, but everyone seemed to be under the same understanding that Asgore and Toriel suddenly getting namedropped with their long-dead son is a pretty sensitive issue, so she wisely didn’t push it when Alphys insisted she’d be okay helping explain things on her own.

Not _entirely_ on her own.

You’d think you two would have shared several long, meaningful glances with each other by now, but honestly you both have been avoiding looking at each other much at all. Neither of you wants to start, you think; yourself mostly because you have no idea where to begin in the first place, and Alphys because...um.

Well, Toriel is pretty scary looking when she’s upset.

The sound your clothes make when you stand up from the couch draws Asgore’s gaze to you, but it kind of floats over your face, trailing over to the empty picture frame being used as a bookend on the shelf behind you. Okay, this has gone on long enough.

“I’m gonna go get him,” you say, and are surprised when you’re immediately met with Toriel stopping in her tracks and straightening up, hands going to her hips without a beat.

“Absolutely not,” she says.

You’re not expecting how much that pisses you off, nearly letting it show before keeping the worst of it to whatever expression must be on your face. “He needs to be here.”

“He does _not,_ ” she says. Even after all this time, you still can’t tell if the authority in her voice comes from being a mother or a queen. You can’t imagine she managed to raise Chara and Asriel both without having to come up with a few tricks. “We have no idea where he went, first off all. Even if we all split up to ask him for answers, it would be impossible to find him.”

“I know where he went.”

This doesn’t seem to satisfy her. “Frisk, you go so far to see the best in people, even when it’s hard, and that’s truly amazing.” She brings her hands forward to fold over her stomach, looking no less stern, but the meaning slanted just a little bit by the gesture. “But after the things I personally saw him do, have heard of him doing, and then he mentions my son--”

She cuts herself off, hands falling down and seeming suddenly...less. 

“Please,” she asks, and you find yourself surprised that she states it like a request. The brief moment of vulnerability is gone, though, completely overtaken by something eerily close to determination in her eyes. “Please stay here.”

 _...She’s afraid of losing you,_ Chara explains. You can feel them looking at her from behind your eyes, taking in the stiff arch of her shoulders and her arms locked at her side with a feeling that you’re really hoping isn’t showing on your face. For a moment, you try to see her as they must see her, but--

You can’t. All you can see is the Boss Monster standing in front of you, looking angry and small and wanting so hard to protect you.

.........You offer her a small smile, suddenly very tired. “Flowey isn’t the only one with answers,” you tell her, barrelling on before the widening of her eyes can make you hesitate. “I’ve been wanting to tell you everything, but I made a promise, and...” You shrug. “I think now I kind of have to tell you anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. But he needs to say it as much as you need to hear it.”

Alphys’ quiet voice manages to startle you, somehow. Feels like today has just been one thing catching you off guard after the other. “I’ve known some things for- for a while, too. Not as much as Frisk or F-Flowey, I think, but...” When she peers at Asgore and Toriel through her glasses, all you can see there is concern. “It’s all stuff I think you should know.”

Your mind snaps to the lab tapes with such a sudden clarity that you can only imagine means Chara’s thoughts went there at the same time as yours. _Ah, shit,_ you think, again with the same energy that makes you wonder if you didn’t think that at the same time, too.

You’re both going to freak out if you stay here any longer. To be honest, you were going to go no matter what Toriel said, but the idea that she might have really tried to stop you still hurts. The idea that she might have let you go without a fight at all hurts, but differently. 

_Yeah,_ Chara says, a constant spectator to your thoughts in the same way you’re constantly immersed in their feelings. _That’s what happens when you want someone you care about to care about you back._

Hm.

“Frisk.”

It’s Asgore’s voice that stops you one foot out the door. He steps out to the backyard, returning a moment later with a plate in his hands. He holds it out to you, smiling nearly the same way he did when you met him for the very first time. All the timelines since, he’s never smiled at you like that again- maybe the way he would falter in battle when you told him he’s killed you before hadn’t just been run of the mill shock from hearing something incredibly fucking stupid.

“You argue like... best friends,” he starts, which is also pretty stupid. He waits until you take the almost empty tin of butterscotch cinnamon pie from his hands to continue. “If it was you who made him see the worth in breaking the Barrier, then I have no doubt you’ll be able to bring him back to us.” Something in the smile breaks. You can’t tell what it is, and Chara is quiet, so you just look at him and wait. “Just... be careful.”

Oh.

Hm....

You would respond if you didn’t feel like that would ruin the moment. You slip the pie into one of your phone’s empty storage slots instead, and give him another small smile of your own, patting his arm. The late afternoon sun hangs heavy in the sky as you turn away to march back towards a familiar trail. If you’re lucky, you might even make it back from the mountain before nightfall.


	2. Chapter 2

“I knew you’d find me here,” is the first thing he says when you find him there, before he even turns to see what you have to say.

Your throat aches. You’ve actually talked more than usual, today, but your hands are busy choking the imaginary life out of the hem of your sweater, so. “Then why did you come here?”

He blinks. Turns back around to the steadily wilting patch of yellow flowers. “We both know I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

There’s a million things that could be said to that, but all of those are left to be hypotheticals when you instead walk over to sit next to him in the grass.

“Frisk,” he says, voice taut. “Please don’t try to convince me to go back up there.”

You just look at him.

“I--” He stops. Trembles and slumps until he looks almost as pathetic as the withering plant life he got his body from in the first place. “Asriel didn’t want to do this to them, and I don’t think I do either. What could I even say? Howdy, it’s me, not-Asriel, your super dead sort of-son who you can just conveniently forget tried murdering everyone several times, right?” He laughs, bitterly. “Or- or- can you even imagine the look on Toriel’s face? _What a miserable creature...!_ ” His features don’t quite morph into hers as a finish to his imitation, but he grimaces like he wants to, like it says something about him that he wants to. “And even more than that, they’ll probably want me to live up there with them, and I can’t- I can’t do that.” He looks to you, almost desperately. “I can’t be who they’ll want me to be.”

“Okay,” you say.

He doesn’t move for a moment. “What?”

“I said okay,” you repeat. “You don’t have to go back.”

He looks at you like you’ve suddenly grown white fur and fluffy ears. You can’t help but be a little amused despite yourself. “Really?”

“Really.” Your hand goes out to one of the many flowers, picking it decisively from its stem to cradle it in your hands. It honestly smells pretty bad, but you don’t want to let go. “Hey, what happened to taking care of these things, anyway?”

Flowey, absolutely bewildered as he is by the subject change, rolls with it like a champ. “I... uh, actually I have no fucking clue. Not long after you left, they just started...wilting.” He gives them a sad, almost bitter look. “No matter what I do, these things are just kind of determined to die.”

You snort. “It’s not like they were going to live forever.”

“Yeah, well, they _could_ have.” Flowey glowers for all it’s worth. “These things have been here for a... a long time.”

Something from today’s blowout has shifted things between you a little bit. Ever since the last time you saw him as Asriel, it’s like all you two do is bicker and tease and sneer, talking to each other through a filter of sarcasm and backwards not-compliments that would do any other emotional ten foot pole to shame. Some of that is still here, obviously, but...

Something in his expression is open and somber in a way you’ve seen very few times while he’s in this form. It hits you hard enough that for a minute all you can do is sort of watch.

“I want to apologize,” you start, immediately being met with a snrk.

“What for this time?” 

You frown, pretending to take offense. “This time?”

“We could sit here all night going over all the stinky shit you’ve done that deserves an apology. Sooo, you’re gonna have to be a little more specific.” He shifts a little in the soil, the trademark move of the suddenly self-conscious. “Uh...really though. For what?”

“I’ve been keeping a secret from you.”

His brow furrows. “What?”

Hell, these flowers are all dying anyway; you grab another one, from closer to the ground this time, and begin to weave its stem into the shoelaces of your boots. “There’s some stuff even you don’t know about that I’m probably gonna have to explain because of all this,” you say. “Stuff that really wanted to be kept secret. But I guess it’s fair. If you can’t keep yours, I shouldn’t get to keep mine, either.”

He thinks about it for a minute. “About the resets?” He thinks about this some more when you shake your head, and apparently gives up, obviously still reeling. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because...” 

You hesitate.

“Because if I tell them, I want to tell you, too,” Chara says.

“But this can’t...this can’t be done halfway,” you pick back up, knowing Flowey wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You pluck another flower, threading it in. “If you want to stay down here and let me handle it, I can’t say I wouldn’t blame you, but I... understand. Or, I understand that I can’t understand how this really feels for you. But it...”

You turn to look at him. The petals of these flowers are getting weird yellow patches on your skin from rolling them between your fingers, and it’s digging up some unwanted memories. Your hands tremble. “If you can’t face them with me, then how could I face you alone?”

You couldn’t. Chara couldn’t. Your reasonings are very different, but in the same way you share most things, you share the truth that Flowey’s reaction to Chara’s continued existence in your heart means as much to you as Toriel and Asgore’s reaction to Flowey means to him, if not more so.

Which is to say: a whole lot.

Several minutes pass without any of you saying anything else. This place is as deep as you can get into the mountain without diving headfirst into the now extra-abandoned ex capital, and aside from the slowly shifting light from the hole in the surface above, there’s not much to signal the change in time, or weather. Maybe it’s gotten cold out there as the sun sets. Maybe it’s still warm. It’s impossible to tell.

“Y’know, when I decided to blabber on about hurting you if I got dragged into the consequences of this fuckup, I should’ve just kept my mouth shut,” Flowey muses.

You consider this. “Most of your problems could probably be solved that way, actually.”

He groans. “Wait, no, don’t say that. I can’t even pretend to be offended because of today. Just kill me.”

“We are both pretty bad at not doing terrible things,” you admit. 

“Yeah, who ever decided to put losers like us in charge of the timeline? Seems like pretty shitty decision making to me.”

“Well...” You hesitate. “I guess that means we know just how much this all turned out for the best.”

The statement hadn’t really been meant as some sort of deep philosophical Thing, but Flowey pauses to consider this for several moments. You don’t interrupt, unwilling to move yourself any closer to the end of this conversation. 

“Do I even have to say it?” he finally asks. “About the not knowing?”

“The not knowing what’s gonna happen?” you offer. “The barely having the slightest clue what sort of way this could turn out? How awesome and terrible it is that there are like, dozens of ways this could go even long after the fact that we have no way of anticipating, or changing?”

He smiles. “Yeah, all of that which you just said.”

“Today was the first time in a really long time that I really understood what that means,” you say, letting the tormented remains of the flower in your grip crumble to the floor. “It scared me real bad at first, but it’s also... It made me realize how long it’s been since I felt like anything I did mattered. That something I did was changing everything in a way I couldn’t just...take back.” You fill your lungs with air and exhale as evenly as you can when you’re scared shitless and trying not to show it. “And even though this is something that could go really, really bad, it feels...nice.” You look back at him again. “I want to be a good person.”

To anyone else, the last comment would probably come out of left field. Flowey’s eyes don’t widen out of surprise, though; you know immediately that he understands.

You can say whatever you want about being a “good person” or a “bad person”, but it doesn’t mean anything when you can take back anything you say, everything you do. Kill someone and feel bad about it. Punch someone and feel bad about it. Burn a house down and feel bad about it. Kill everyone and feel bad about it. Erase it all again, and none of it is real. Just another chance out of hundreds and hundreds.

You’ve done a lot of things in a lot of timelines, bad and good, which is the real kicker. You know just as well as Flowey does that if none of the awful shit you did really happened, then none of the good things you did to make up for it really matter either.

Which--

You want to be a good person. You want your choices to mean something. You want your mistakes to mean something, so that your attempts to fix them mean something, too. You want so badly to at least get the chance to try.

You want to be a good person.

Flowey’s eyes narrow suddenly. “Thought you said you weren’t gonna try to convince me.”

You fail step 1 at trying to be good by not even attempting to resist rolling your eyes. “I’m not.”

“You so are!”

“I’m telling you your options,” you protest, “and also telling you how I feel? If you think I’m trying to convince you or whatever it’s probably because you already know what you wanna do.”

His expression sombers almost immediately. “What...what do *you* want me to do?”

You mull this over or a moment, not because you think whatever you’re about to say will sway him, but because you want to give an honest answer.

“I want to be able to talk to you like this more,” you start. “And like, not to say it’ll be all fun and enjoyable for either of us, but I really do want to tell you everything. So I guess I want you to come back with me.” 

He looks at you. “That simple?”

You have no words to offer him except for a shrug.

He sighs. Heavily, tiredly, absolutely beside himself with the dramatics of it. “Well then, I hope you brought a flashlight, I guess. There’s no way I was gonna let you climb back down this shithole in the dark by yourself anyway.”

You blink at him. “Are you--”

“Yeah yeah, I’ll go back with you,” he says. “Even though everything will probably be awkward and terrible and uncertain or whatever. You convinced me.”

“I didn’t convince you of anything,” you say, much more warmly than you meant to.

You climb to your feet. It’ll take at least an hour or two to get back. You have no idea how long you’ve been gone already, and you’re too anxious to check your phone. You’d turned it off, afraid that you would or wouldn’t get a barrage of text messages during your visit, which, actually--

You turn it back on. There are only four missed texts: one from Sans, and three from Toriel.

sans: lol kid did you have a fun day or what

You feel perfectly safe ignoring this one.

  
Toriel: Frisk...I feel like I was terribly unfair to you today. I still have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but it was never my intention to conduct myself in a way that it’d seem I don’t trust you. And for that I’m sorry.  
Toriel: Regardless of what happens, let me know when you’re on your way back as soon as you’re able, will you not?  
Toriel: I love you. ]:) - Toriel

...You’ll respond to these in a minute. Not yet. There’s still something you need to do, and Flowey’s watching you.

The tin of pie settles into your hand with an absent _pop._ Your smile is a little rueful as you kneel down in the grass to show him what it is. You probably couldn’t talk anymore right now unless you got Chara to help you, but they’re being contemplative in a way that means they’re thinking Big Thoughts, so you decide not to interrupt them and simply go back to ASL. “Asgore wanted to make sure you got this,” you tell him.

Flowey’s laugh is half groan. “Of course he did, the big sappy idiot.” His expressions are rapidly closing off again in the over-performative way he gets, but that’s okay. There’s still some fondness there when he looks down at the single saved slice. “There’s no way I can eat this.”

You laugh, letting the empty space in your inventory fill with it again. “Yeah, I don’t think I could eat right now, either.”

“You, not eat?” Flowey scoffs. “As if.”

“Okay, I could eat it,” you allow, “but that doesn’t mean I want to.”

You hesitate. Now is the time when you say goodbye. Yet, despite that, you can’t help but be afraid that as soon as you step outside, all of this will dissolve the same way a lot of the rest of your life has. What if you leave and he changes his mind? What if you get back and he’s not there?

Normally you would’ve expected him to make fun of you for your reluctance, but you guess he has one more surprise for you. “I’ll meet you there, Frisk,” he says, not a trace of insincerity to his expression. Of course, you know as well as he does that his face is as malleable as wet clay, but that only gives the face he’s wearing more meaning. “I promise.”

You smile at him. Cross an X over your heart with a finger, and begin the long climb back home.


End file.
